Author: admin

I’m enjoying this photo blog, ShootTokyo. I actually discovered it through Kickstarter, the proprietor was Kickstarting a book of his photos and it looked cool and so I backed it. As I spend more time on his site, I become ever more impressed with his shots and how evocative they are of the city, and its many moods.

Photo from http://shoottokyo.com/.

I found you in 2011, in Tokyo.

You were a replacement; I was on the rebound from my last love… You were busier, flashier, but still the same beautiful shade, like a cheap glass of red wine. You were a compromise, I admit.

I didn’t love you at first.

As I sit in this hotel room in Seattle, my flight home inching ever closer and the good night’s sleep I’d promised myself getting ever-more-distant, I feel I owe you more than simply leaving you behind in the morning.

This isn’t the first time we’ve broken up. Or tried to. 4 or 5 others have come into my life, and each time I thought they were the one, but I always came back to you. You were comfortable, even at the beginning, but now you’re like a second skin. Whenever I was given the choice, I chose you. I hated myself for it, as you fell further and further apart.

This time, we’re done. For real.

You finally gave out on me, and gave up on me. I ended up getting hurt (and wet), so I’m getting over you. Getting rid of you, for good.

Despite it all, what we had is special. I mean, we traveled, we did amazing things, we met wonderful people. We’ve been back to Tokyo 5 times together, and to England, and all over America. It was real. I’ll miss it. But I’d rather fondly remember the good times than sully those memories with what you’ve become.

So thank you, and goodbye.

– Christopher

P.S.: I found someone new—they’re Japanese too, what’re the odds? XOXO

In my absence, a great blog sprung up called Mangabrog, the proprietor of which has been translating Japanese-language interviews with manga into English for us poor non-Japanese-reading fans. Truly, God’s Work.

I’ve now availed myself of all of the site’s treasures, but I gotta say I loved this just-posted interview between Furuya Usamaru (Lychee Light Club, Genkaku Picasso) and Inio Asano (Solanin, Nijigahara Holograph) from Erotics F magazine volume 79.  Here’s a great bit:

Asano: If you were to ask me what my aim has been with the manga I’ve made up until now, I’d say that I’ve inevitably been making stuff that I myself like — but since I imagine there are a lot of people like me, I figured I could count on there being a decent number of people out there who’ll be able to “get” my manga. The problem, though, is if my readers are people are like me, and I don’t really like people who are similar to me, then that means that I dislike my readers.

Furuya: They do say that people tend to dislike people similar to themselves.

Asano: That’s what it is—it’s hard to like someone when you can see through them like that. I understand the reason people read my manga, what they like about it and what they’re going to eventually dislike about it, so I just can’t fully accept my readers. Hence my urge to mess with them.

The whole interview is fantastic–it’s very honest, and goes into great detail on the creative side of things too.

As for the rest of the site, I’m absolutely loving the two Taiyo Matsumoto interviews that are there, two more interviews with Asano, Daisuke Igarashi, Hiroki Samura, the dude who does Gantz… haha. It’s an awesome site that seems to exist solely for me to enjoy, so I hope you’ll make it more-real by sharing it with me.

http://mangabrog.wordpress.com/

– Chris

Long story short: My wordpress install for comics212 corrupted in some unknowable way, and could wordpress could no longer be updated except manually, which is a pain in the behind. This necessitated a full reinstall. It meant that everything might break. It means a fresh start.

I’d had my previous site design, my previous, gorgeous site design, for many many years. Nadine Lessio did a lovely job of it, but no web design is meant to last that long and it’s a testament to how solid it was that it lasted as long as it did. I used to redesign my site every week, when I was on blogger. By hand. Nadine’s lasted for 5 or 6 years, I think. Thank you, Nadine.

This blog had very much started to feel like a relic of a previous version of myself. It was written by the guy who was passionate about the worlds of comics and manga, who blogged with that swanky red-white-and-blue design for years. It was nostalgic visiting my blog. That’s awful, in a whole hell of a lot of ways.

So, a fresh start.

I’m hoping it leads somewhere.

– Christopher